Most of my generation lost faith in the Nobel Committee when they bestowed the Peace Prize on Henry Kissinger. The administrators of Alfred Nobel’s legacy have received deserved and undeserved criticism ever since and long before. I’m among those who thinks Robert Zimmerman’s Nobel Prize for Literature is not only deserved but overdue. For those disagree, let’s run through a few samplings from Prize-winning poets past. Consider the winner of the Nobel’s first prize for literature, Sully Prudhomme, 1901. At a time when Leo Tolstoy was still alive, the Committee gave him the award for his poetry. His most famous poem was the following (translated from French): The Broken Vase A fan’s light tap Was enough to chip This flower vase In which the roses Now are dying. No sound it made But a hairline crack Day after day Almost unseen Crept slowly round the glass And dropp by dropp The water trickled out While the vital sap In the roses’ stems Grew dry. Now no-one doubts: “Don’t touch”, they say, “It’s broken”. Often, too, the hand one loves May lightly brush against the heart And bruise it. Slowly then across that heart A hidden crack will spread And love’s fair flower perish. Nice, huh? Not quite War and Peace but nice. Here’s Robert Zimmerman from Visions of Johanna – hardly his most famous. Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet ? We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it Lights flicker from the opposite loft In this room the heat pipes just cough The country music station plays soft But there's nothing really nothing to turn off Just Louise and her lover so entwined And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind. In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane Louise she's all right she's just near She's delicate and seems like the mirror But she just makes it all too concise and too clear That Johanna's not here The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place. The last couplet alone is worth a prize. How about 1907 winner Rudyard Kipling. Probably his most famous is If: If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! Comparisons are odious but for thematic similarities, try this one from Mr. Zimmerman. My Back Pages
Crimson flames tied through my ears, rollin' high and mighty traps Pounced with fire on flaming roads using ideas as my maps "We'll meet on edges, soon, " said I, proud 'neath heated brow Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth, "rip down all hate, " I screamed Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull, I dreamed Romantic facts of musketeers foundationed deep, somehow Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now Girls' faces formed the forward path from phony jealousy To memorizing politics of ancient history Flung down by corpse evangelists, unthought of, though somehow Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now A self-ordained professor's tongue too serious to fool Spouted out that liberty is just equality in school "Equality, " I spoke the word as if a wedding vow Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach Fearing not that I'd become my enemy in the instant that I preach My existence led by confusion boats, mutiny from stern to bow Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats too noble to neglect Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now The first “lyricist” to win the Nobel for Literature may have been the “Bard of Bengal,” Indian humanist-freedom fighter, Rabindranath Tagore, in 1913. He was also a novelist and playwright but he won the Nobel for his poetry. Consider his Where the Mind Is Without Fear: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake Tagore was standing up against the colonialist British Empire decades before Gandhi led his independence movement. Bob Dylan spoke out against the American Empire fifty years later: The Times, They Are A’Changin’ Come gather around people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone And if your breath to you is worth saving Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changing Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no telling who that it's naming For the loser now will be later to win Cause the times they are a-changing The Nobel awarded its 1923 prize to poet William Butler Yeats. Among his great works was the Irish rebel poem, Remorse for Intemperate Speech – which was no such thing. I RANTED to the knave and fool, But outgrew that school, Would transform the part, Fit audience found, but cannot rule My fanatic heart. I sought my betters: though in each Fine manners, liberal speech, Turn hatred into sport, Nothing said or done can reach My fanatic heart, Out of Ireland have we come. Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb A fanatic heart. Dylan’s thoughts on the same theme were more direct: Masters of War Come you masters of war You that build the big guns You that build the death planes You that build all the bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks You that never done nothin' But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly … You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do Coleridge could’ve written Mr. Tambourine Man. Burns, Blake or Shelly could’ve written Lay Lady Lay. And Andrew Marvel’s Coy Mistress had nothing on Ramona. One of the great selections of the Nobel Committee was T.S. Elliot in 1948. For The Wasteland alone, he was deserving. But when you get a moment, compare The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to Ballad of a Thin Man. Then compare anything to Desolation Row. Bob Dylan bristled at being called “a spokesman for his generation.” He was never a spokesman. He was a poet. His imagery and phrasing have already inspired generations beyond his own. They’ll continue to do so for many generations to come. 2016 will be remembered as a year when voters for the Nobel Prize for Literature got it right.
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